Heroes Are All Around Us With Love & Death

Step inside a split-level stucco home at the end of a cul-de-sac in California. Walk to the family room. Step inside the room. It is a well-lit room with bright colors everywhere. Sounds of laughter and love fill the room. One wall has a big screen TV that shows children’s movies and cartoons twenty-four hours a day. In the center of the room is a hospital bed. A boy lies almost motionless in the bed. He has three tubes going in and out of him. There is a monitor near by.

A visit with the boy’s mother tells part of the story but the rest of the story continues. His mother tells how eighteen months ago her family was visiting some friends who had a swimming pool. There was a lot of activity going on. They were barbequing, her daughters were trying on clothes their friends had given them, the older boys were playing basketball and her son decided to go in to the pool by him self. Her son was a fish. He loved water. He would swim every chance he got. She tells you that by the size of the bump on his head, that he must have slipped and hit his head on the edge of the pool before falling in. No one noticed that he wasn’t around for about a half hour. His love for swimming brought them to the pool where they found him under water in the deep end.

He was still alive when the ambulance brought him to the hospital but he had been in a coma ever since then. After about three months with no noticeable change she and her husband thought that that by bringing their son home in to a warm loving bright environment it would give him reason to wake up. Ever since then he has been in the center of the family room surrounded by familiar things he knows, by people he loves, by love and by hope. With tears in her eyes she tells you that she believes that God will provide a miracle. Until he does, we keep on doing our part filling his days with love and care.

She tells you that she and her husband change his tubes so that they can be sure that the tube changing is done gently. She tells you that she lovingly bathes him and changes his clothes every day. She tells you that no matter what happens she is glad for the privilege of giving her son these acts of love. Since her son’s accident she sleeps no more than three hours at a time and then checks on her son. Along with all this she tells you she works hard to make sure her other son, two daughters and husband are taken care of and know her love. She tells you she is exhausted but her strength comes from being a mother, the love from her children, husband and the one above.

You leave the brightly lit family room and split level stucco home at the end of a cul-de-sac in California hoping for a miracle for this family. Six months later a message comes telling of how this young man slipped quietly in to death. You are filled with grief thinking that a miracle never happened, but then you think back on a brightly lit family room and split level stucco home at the end of a cul-de-sac in California full of love, laughter and hope. You think that for twenty-four months a miracle did occur. For in that period of time in a brightly lit family room and split level stucco home at the end of a cul-de-sac in California love laughter and hope was being shared by a family of heroes. You remember that when you were visiting that room heroes were all around you.

For More Heroes Around Us stories read the up coming book "Heroes Around Us"